MADE.By You. For You. {@CHIxMPLS}

Tag Archives: phoenix

The 70th Cannes Film Festival wrapped up this year with several big surprises. The Killing of a Sacred Deer and You Were Never Really Here both tied for the best screenplay award. Sofia Coppola became the first female director to win the Best Director award at Cannes in 56 years for The Beguiled, an adaptation of Thomas Cullinan’s Civil War novel about a wounded soldier who takes refuge among the inhabitants of a girls’ school in Virginia. Joaquin Phoenix and Diane Kruger were awarded best actor awards for their respective roles in You Were Never Really Here and In The Fade, the latter of which featured Kruger speaking in her native German. Additionally, Nicole Kidman received a special award for her appearances in four of this year’s festival entries, including The Beguiled, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, and Top of the Lake. Other noteworthy entries include BPM (Beats Per Minute), a drama focused around the French gay-rights movement in the early 90s that earned this year’s Grand Prix, and Ruben Östlund’s The Square, about a high-class museum curator who is forced to mingle with lower class members when he is pick-pocketed on the street. A full list of this year’s winners is provided below…. Continue reading →

Director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Rango) has teamed up once again with cinematographer Bojan Bazelli (Rock of Ages, Pete’s Dragon) for a new thriller titled A Cure for Wellness. The story follows a young business executive who is sent to retrieve his company’s CEO from a mysterious wellness center isolated in the Swiss Alps and comes to suspect that the center, although renowned for its miraculous (if not unconventional) treatments, is not all it’s made out to be. Leading the cast are actors Dane DeHaan (Lawless, Kill Your Darlings), Jason Issacs (The Patriot, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), Mia Goth (Nymphomaniac: Volume II, Everest), Ivo Nandi (Sons of Anarchy, Boardwalk Empire), Adrian Schiller (Bright Star, The Danish Girl), Celia Imrie (Nanny McPhee, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), and Harry Groener (Patch Adams, Road to Perdition). Continue reading →

A few months back we heard the first whisperings of an upcoming remake of the 1977 Walt Disney classic Pete’s Dragon, and now we have the first teaser trailer for the new movie, which is due out in August. Writer/director David Lowery (Pioneer, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) adapted the original S.S. Field story with co-screenwriter Toby Halbrooks (Robots Are Blue, Dig) about a young orphan named Pete who goes on extraordinary adventures with his friend, a giant dragon named Elliott. Leading the cast are actors Bryce Dallas Howard (The Help, Jurassic World), Robert Redford (All The President’s Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Bourne Supremacy), Wes Bentley (The Hunger Games, Interstellar), Craig Hall (King Kong, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug), and Oakes Fegley (This Is Where I Leave You, Prism) as young orphan Pete. This will be the third Disney remake that’s due out this year, at least that we’ve been watching. The first is the new adaptation of The Jungle Book from director Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Chef) coming out this April, and the second is the The Legend of Tarzan from director David Yates (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince), starring Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street, Focus) and Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained, Inglorious Basterds), which is due out in July. The trailer for the new Pete’s Dragon is available here on MADE. Look for more updates on these three movies coming out soon.

Director Paul McGuigan‘s Victor Frankenstein is opening in theaters nationwide this Friday. Starring Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Woman in Black) as Igor, the movie is a new take on the classic Mary Shelley story, told from the perspective of Igor and how he met Victor Frankenstein in medical school at a time of technological innovation, and how Frankenstein nearly drove himself to madness with his ambition to challenge science and test the bounds of life and death. Although the story looks like it might be pretty drawn out and exaggerated, it does look like it will be a pretty fun watch. James McAvoy (Wanted, X-Men: First Class) co-stars as Victor Von Frankenstein, with Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey, Winter’s Tale) and Andrew Scott (Locke, Spectre) included in the supporting cast. McGuigan (Wicker Park, Lucky Number Sleven) directed from a script by screenwriter Max Landis (Chronicle, American Ultra). The trailer is available here on MADE; you can decide for yourself how you think it will turn out. Let me know what you think. Enjoy!

This weekend, alongside Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck with Bill Hader and Woody Allen’s Irrational Man with Joaquin Phoenix, movie-goers will also be able to see a literary icon return to the big screen in the form of director Bill Condon‘s new drama Mr. Holmes. Condon (Gods and Monsters, The Fifth Estate) directs Oscar-nominee Ian McKellen (X-Men, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) in an adaptation of Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind, that finds a retired Sherlock Holmes toying over an unsolved case involving a beautiful woman and a confrontation with an angry husband. Fellow Oscar-nominee Laura Linney (The Truman Show, Mystic River) and Hiroyuki Sanada (Rush Hour 3, The Wolverine) make up the supporting cast. The trailer is available here on MADE. Enjoy the weekend line-up!

We’ve been keeping an eye on this project for what seems like years now (which isn’t far from reality considering it has taken more than a decade to get a Pablo Escobar biopic on the big screen), but now we finally have some more news as to a nationwide release. Escobar: Paradise Lost, which is directed by Italian actor Andrea Di Stefano (Nine, Life of Pi), was originally given a limited release back in January of this year, but now the film will see another release in theaters this June 26th in New York, LA, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, El Paso, Memphis, Tulsa, Phoenix and Washington DC. Leading the cast in the role of Escobar is Oscar-winner Benicio Del Toro (The Usual Suspects, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas), Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games, Red Dawn), and Claudia Traisac (The 7th Day, Apaches). The international trailer is available here on MADE. Be sure to check your local listings if you live in any of these areas!

The new futuristic A.I. film from director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) titled Chappie is opening in theaters this March 6th, but next month, movie-goers will get to see a different kind of A.I. story that doesn’t necessarily involve revolution or all-out-war between man and machine. The new film is titled Ex Machina and comes from a script by film writer/director Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later), who also directed. Ex Machina follows the story of a young programmer, Caleb, who wins a week vacation to the company-CEO’s private mountain retreat only to find his reason for being there is to take part in an experiment involving A.I. encased in a robot resembling a beautiful human-woman. Sounds a bit reminiscent of Her with Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson back in 2013, but this time we’re dealing with an actual robot that not only brings an erie human quality to the film, but also allows for the great special-effect sequences you can see in the trailer. Starring in the film are actors Alicia Vikander (A Royal Affair, The Fifth Estate), Domhnall Gleeson (About Time, Unbroken), and Golden Globe-nominee Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis, A Most Violent Year). This one really looks like it will be worth the watch, so definitely consider adding it to your must-see list; in the meantime you can check out the new trailer here on MADE. The film is scheduled for release April 10, 2015.

This Friday will see a huge opening weekend for Hollywood. The Civil Rights drama Selma with David Oyelowo (The Last King of Scotland, Interstellar), as well as Taken 3 with Liam Neeson and Paul Thomas Anderson‘s new 1970s LA-Noir drama Inherent Vice with Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin are all opening this Friday, January 9th. If that’s not enough, next Friday will see the release of Kevin Hart‘s new comedy The Wedding Ringer, in which he poses as best-man for complete strangers, and the long-awaited character-study film Escobar: Paradise Lost, starring Benicio Del Toro as the infamous Colombian kingpin, with Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games, Red Dawn), Brady Corbet (Melancholia, Martha Marcy May Marlene), and Claudia Traisac (Cuentame, El Principe) making up the supporting cast. The film comes from actor-turned-writer/director Andrea Di Stefano (Eat Pray Love, Life of Pi) and was first seen back in September 2014 at the Toronto Film Festival. Also opening this month is director David Koepp’s Mortdecai with Johnny Depp and Gwyneth Paltrow, so I’d say we’re getting 2015 off to a pretty big start. Enjoy!

The latest project from acclaimed writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, The Master) is opening in theaters this Friday, January 9th, and I think it will probably be one of the better releases since Interstellar back in November, give-or-take a few exceptions. Adapted by Anderson from the novel by Thomas Pynchon, the film follows outlandish private investigator Larry “Doc” Sportello across 1970s Los Angeles as he investigates the death of his ex-girlfriend. Joaquin Phoenix (Signs, Walk The Line) and Josh Brolin (No Country For Old Men, Men In Black 3) are leading the cast that also includes Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short, and Benicio Del Toro. Anderson’s last film, The Master, received three Academy Award nominations and three Golden Globe nominations, all for Best Actor (Joaquin Phoenix), Best Supporting Actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and Best Supporting Actress (Amy Adams), and before that, There Will Be Blood won two Oscars in 2008 for Best Actor (Daniel Day Lewis) and Best Cinematography (Robert Elswit), so needless to say, this director knows what he’s doing. Check out the trailer here on MADE, then seriously consider seeing this one on the big screen.

We were all pretty surprised to see that Liam Neeson would be appearing in a sequel to his 2008 action thriller Taken, but seeing as they made a 2nd I guess they may as well go ahead and make a 3rd. Yes, a 3rd. Liam Neeson will grace the screen one more time this January as ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills, who has a wife and daughter that, for some reason, always seem to be the target of a kidnapping plot. This time out Mills finds himself framed for the murder of his ex-wife, and must ensue on a new mission to clear his name by finding the true killer before the authorities track him down. Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker (Phone Booth, Lee Daniel’s The Butler) will be joining the supporting cast along with Maggie Grace (Taken, The Fog) and Famke Janssen (GoldenEye, X-Men) returning as daughter Kim and ex-wife Lenore. Screenwriting/directing duo Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen (Leon: The Professional, The Fifth Element), who wrote both Taken and Taken 2, penned the new script for director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3, Taken 2). Check out the new trailer here on MADE; the new movie comes out January 9th. Also opening on January 9th is director Paul Thomas Anderson‘s upcoming LA-noir drama Inherent Vice with Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin, as well as Ava DuVernay’s Civil Rights drama Selma with David Oyelowo and Tim Roth, so be sure to mark your calendar for January 9!